Is it real?
by VictoriaPyrrhi
Summary: River has a request for Jayne.


"Is it real?" she asked, sliding out from behind a stack of crates. Jayne jumped about a foot in the air.

"Gorramit, crazy!" His heart was in his chest, but he'd be a gorram mule before he'd admit it out loud. Damn girl was spooky as hell, appearing out of nowhere like that. If River noticed or cared that she had scared the living hell out of him, she didn't show it.

"Is it real?" she asked again, brow darkening as if a storm cloud had passed over her. In a slightly detached way, Jayne found the change in her moods almost intriguing. But that was in a detached way, and almost didn't count, especially when it was impossible to judge when that little cloud was going to turn into a full-out hurricane with crazy there as the source. So Jayne attempted to do what he would normally do, which was growl menacingly at the girl and pretend that he didn't hear her question. But Crazy, he noted, was having none of that. She scowled fiercely, and he could almost see that little cloud growing and darkening. He tried to move past her, but she would have none of that either, and Jayne knew that he'd catch hell if he forced his way past her and started shit and the rest of them found out about it. He scowled as well, and for a moment, they just stared at each other, identical expressions on their faces. River broke the silence first.

"I must know," she demanded. "Is. It. Real." Jayne had to give her one point at least for sheer stubbornness. But that was really only an admirable trait in him, and when it didn't hinder his plans…or when it wasn't being exhibited by a little crazy girl who was asking him weird questions and wouldn't get out of his way.

And so Jayne answered her. Fuck it if the Doc and the Cap yelled at him for it, she'd been the one that asked the gorram question.

"Look here, girl, there ain't nothin' 'bout me that ain't one-hundred percent _real_." He said it with a leer that had gotten him more trim than he could rightly number, but River neither ran to him or away from him. Hell, she didn't even seem fazed by his pronouncement. Come to think of it, Jayne wasn't sure which opinion he had been planning on instilling in the girl, but he reckoned that it really didn't matter. After all, he had answered her question, and now he could go about his business. Vera needed a good rub down. Come to think on it, he could use one himself…

Needless to say, he did not expect to look down into the face of the moonbrain and see in it excitement and eagerness. He was going to be in deep, deep shit with the Cap'n for this, of that he was positive. Probably with Book, too. And the Doc, but he rarely counted the Doc. Having started out without a full understanding of the situation, it wasn't hard to figure that Jayne's current assessment of the situation was less than perfect, and he was much more baffled than he had been starting out. And she kept looking at him like that. Jayne was beginning to get awfully uncomfortable with her just looking at him like that, all big-eyed and brimming with excitement and eagerness. He could just bet that her little body was vibrating with unreleased tension. Something in his belly coiled and tightened, and he didn't like that feeling one bit. Dealing with crazy always left him feeling twelve kinds of weird, and this time was no exception. In fact, it might even be worse than normal.

"It _is_ real, not false!" she cried out, her face looking like it had the power of a gorram sun behind it. The feeling in his gut worsened a little bit and was almost painful as she smiled and her words sank in.

"HEY! Whadya mean, 'false?' Who's been spreadin' filthy lies!" River tilted her head to one side. Jayne hadn't had anyone send a look like that at him since he was a kid, and the sender had been his dog, Jules. He was certain, though, that Jules' look had never made him feel weird, and that uncomfortable feeling wasn't going away.

"I am so pleased!" River exclaimed, apparently deciding that his outburst wasn't worth sidetracking her train of thought for. "Tales of your prowess are not suspect, nor exaggerated, and it is all real, so I am filled with hope!" Jayne struggled to figure out why Crazy knew or cared about his prowess, though a small part of him couldn't deny that he was pleased at the description, no matter the source. And it was getting harder and harder for him to think clearly with that beaming face staring up at him, and her excitement noticeable.

Jayne had never really given much thought to the girl standing before him, at least not much more than considering the price that was put on her head, or the craziness. Or that she was a warm body…or a girl…or not bad to look at when she wasn't all creepifying. Ok…it was possible that he had given her a little more thought than was previously suspected. But still, it wasn't much in his mind.

But she kept talking about his prowess and damned if that didn't make him feel just a little puffed up.

"You must do something for me," she continued, voice breathy with anticipation, and completely ignorant of Jayne's thoughts or the increasing tension in the mercenary's body. Jayne narrowed his eyes. Was it just him, or had Crazy's voice just gone all sultry? Her hands were on his arms now, clutching at him in a manner that shouldn't have been exciting at all, but somehow was being interpreted that way by his traitorous body.

"Please, Jayne," she whispered. Jayne let out a groan. Gorram girl was killing him and she wasn't even _doing_ anything yet. If she spoke at him like that again, he'd be hard…uh…hard-pressed to refuse her anything she asked. Not that he would _mind_, but he was awfully attached to, you know…living.

"Jayne," her voice was low and soft and pleading, and Jayne didn't think that he'd ever heard such an arousing noise before in his life than his name coming off of her lips like that.

"Yeah…?" he all but growled at her. She was closer now, much, much closer than he'd have been comfortable with in a normal situation. But then this situation hadn't been normal from the beginning, so it wasn't really fair of him to start complaining about it now. Her eyes, bright and brown, and so _eager_, just staring at him, and as they did, he found himself just staring right back. When she spoke, it was her lips that had him entranced. The words didn't have meaning…he just wanted to watch them form and spill to see those perfect lips move…

"Jayne?" Her voice broke through his haze.

"Huh?" Her tone was much different this time she said his name. More demanding. Less breathy. Still kinda nice, he mused.

"Will you do it?" The leer spread back over his face again.

"Tell me what you want me to do, baby." The words slipped out before he had any time to shut his mouth, which, like his body, seemed to have turned traitor on him.

River's eyes narrowed a little.

"I asked you already."

"Ask me again," he replied, still smirking. He could get into this game, all right.

"You must protect me." It wasn't really a question, but then, Jayne wasn't too picky on the details.

"From what? Something big and bad out there?" His voice was low, and River looked thoughtfully at him for a moment, as if considering him anew.

Jayne wasn't the most intelligent of men, but he was said to be very perceptive. It was a main cause of him continuing to breathe, despite more people than he'd like to remember trying to halt that particular necessary function. So it wasn't surprising that he caught Crazy's pause. And when her eyes narrowed at him, he thought that he might have said something wrong, though he had no idea what it might have been.

"There is something bad," she replied, voice dropping back down to what Jayne would begin to refer to as "dangerous levels." Girl could do some serious damage with a voice like that. She pressed a little more urgently into his arm, and he could feel her body now, instead of just her hands. Oh, yes, his mind said, there is definitely a difference here. Only trouble was, he couldn't figure out for the life of him why there was a difference. "Something very, very bad," she whispered.

If Jayne were the poetic type, and, mind you, he wasn't, he would have described her voice as being the sound that made Adam bite into the apple—a low, rough sound that made the pulling in his gut worse and familiar all at once. _Shit._ Jayne swallowed quickly.

"Very. _Bad_."

"Hell, girl."

"Possibly." Jayne swallowed hard and with some difficulty. That voice of hers was sending all kinds of strange signals to his traitorous body, and he was trying desperately to stay focused in the light of the crazy girl who had attached herself to him. "It's going to eat me alive. I'm frightened of it going to eat me all up, and there won't be anything left," she continued in that strange voice, somewhere between lost little girl and something all manner of sultry.

"And you want the big, bad merc to protect you from it?" Jayne asked.

"That is the request, yes."

"And it's big and bad and all manner of scary?" his voice was rough, and for the first time, River felt something of a chill run down her spine from it. Jayne's thoughts ran across her brain like a Technicolor rainstorm: no actual thoughts, but such strong feelings and everything all coded into shades. She had gotten so good at deciphering the shades; it was no difficult task to tell that Jayne's mood had taken a dramatic shift somewhere far away from scared, where he had started.

"The worst," she agreed, shivering again when she noticed that Jayne's hands had come up to grip her arms, mirroring her own earlier actions.

Jayne wondered when his body had decided to make that little move, and figured somewhat that he understood how Mal felt when the crew didn't hold straight on to orders. It was a mite frustrating not knowing how he ended up holding a crazy girl.

"You gonna tell me what this scary monster is?" River's eyes met his, dark and wide, and fully sincere.

"You gonna protect me?" she rejoined in a perfect parody of his voice.

"Sure thing, baby," Jayne murmured before he could order the words to stop in his throat. The smile that she gave him almost made up for his unwilling reaction.

"Thank you," she breathed happily. She had her guarantee.

"I cain't protect you iffin' I don't know what I'm doing it from," Jayne reminded her, head still filled with all sorts of strange reddish-green thoughts. River leaned closer to him, forcing his upper body down lower as she sort of half-pulled herself up towards his face. Jayne stiffened slightly, feeling her soft breath skitter across his lips and cheek, and then the edge of his ear. Her lips were so close that he would have sworn on Vera that she was actually touching him, and Jayne's brain degraded into the swirling red and green mass of his primal urges. River's soft answer snapped him back to the edge of reality.

"Bible man's hair."

Mal looked up to see Jayne stalking across the catwalk over the cargo bay, his boots making the most amount of noise possible. If Mal hadn't known better, he'd say that his merc was in a system-class snit. The question of course, would be why his hired gun was in such a raging state. Following the logical course of action, Mal called out,

"Jayne? You got a powerful bee in your bonnet or somesuch I need to know about, stomping all around my decks like that?" The mercenary stopped briefly, sending a malicious glare down at his employer.

"No." His reply was all but growled out, and Mal was not at all convinced in the sincerity of the answer, especially given that Jayne was now studiously not looking his captain in the eyes.

"Sure about that?" Jayne's scowl deepened into an expression that Mal generally only associated with Jayne in conjunction to a job gone wrong, being injured (often at the same time as the first), and when being aggravated (perceived or actual) by the Doc's _mei mei_. Seeing as how they hadn't been on any jobs since the last time that he'd seen Jayne, Mal was putting a moderate bet on it being something to do with River. "River ain't been bothering you none, has she?" Jayne's shoulders tensed up even further (a fact that was not unnoticed by Mal considering how tense his shoulders had been already), and his brow furrowed.

Jayne would have been a right fearsome sight right now, had there been anyone on the other end of that glare. As it were, Mal supposed that that wall might think twice about ever angering the merc.

"No." Mal was even less convinced than before, but before he could pursue the matter any further, Jayne continued roughly, "If you need me, I'll be in my bunk."


End file.
